I lived within hearing distance (that is, courier's reports) of Mr. de Puyjalon, while that gentleman resided on the coast, and apart from hearing that he set a fox trap or two about his shanty, never heard him mentioned as what we would call a trapper.
In his article he gives the pekan the credit of showing considerable cunning and finesses. As a matter of natural history they have no more of this than a marten, and will bungle into an ordinarily made dead-fall in the same way. The only thing to do when fisher are known to be about a line of marten traps is to make a larger sized house for him and extra heavy weight to keep him down when caught.
That the fisher decreases in number is quite contrary to facts. According to the last London sales of mixed furs in September, fisher stood at 4,926, in 1893 4,828, and in 1883 4,640, showing that they have increased slightly. In some parts of the country they stand in the returns about equal to the marten exported. I remember this very plainly, for at the time it struck me as peculiar. I was in charge of an out-post on Lake Superior. Our returns were principally beaver, foxes and lynx, very few marten, and in that year I had at the close of trade 96 marten and 96 fisher. This was impressed on my memory as being a strange coincidence, because the post I had been previously stationed at turned out over two thousand marten to eight or ten fisher. The prices for fisher in the Canadian market vary but little and we never have fluctuations as in silver foxes and marten. The skins are little used in any country except Russia and China, where they are used chiefly by the rich as coat linings. As they have a tough skin, and when prime a deep, rich fur, it is a wonder — since they are comparatively few on the market — that they do not command a better price.
The resort of the pekan is principally along the mountain ranges, never in the black spruce or flat barren country of the table land or to the north of it. Their food consists of rabbits, partridges, mice, squirrels and fruit when in season. When the mountain ash berries are plentiful and hang late in the autumn, both the fisher and the marten are difficult, if not impossible, to trap, as there is no meat lure you can bait with, that will induce them to leave the berries.
In a year of scarcity of fruits, when the fisher has to depend on his own adroitness in securing his food, I have read the signs and seen where one has been very persistent in running down a rabbit, the chase being up and down, in and out, until bunny was overtaken, killed and eaten.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHISELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER.
It is only in the far back country that the once plentiful beaver are to be found at the present day, and though a description of one of the modes the Indians adopt in killing them may be of no practical use to the present generation of hunters on the fringe of civilization, it will at least be interesting to them and remembered by some old-timers. Chiselling, or trenching, beaver, as it is sometimes called, is yet followed by the interior Indians, and when conditions are favorable, is a most expeditious way of piling up a whole lodge.
The writer in his young days has many a time accompanied the Indians on these hunts, and the description of my last participation in this exciting mode of hunting I will endeavor to explain to the reader. I found a large lodge of beaver in a very small lake, probably a quarter of a mile long by one-eighth wide. It was so late in the fall that it was too near freezing to set traps in open water, and the appearance of the shore conveyed to my experienced eye that it could be chiselled to advantage. I therefore returned to the post and left the beaver undisturbed.